Showing posts with label Annie Hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Annie Hall. Show all posts

Friday, 2 January 2015

A hasty little response to the latest cancer stories [incomplete]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

2 January

On this day, there are Two ‘cancer stories’ for the price of one on Yahoo !




But how do such news items even get to us ? :




And, when people comment (who might stand to lose... ?), where is the bias (sc. ‘the truth’) ? :











Other than Woody Allen famously saying (through characters in his films, i.e. in the script) Hey, don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with the person I love most ! [Annie Hall (1977), we also have this (from Sleeper (1973)*) :


Female doctor : What we have done, Miles, is highly illegal and, if we get caught, we’ll be destroyed – along with you.

Miles Monroe: Destroyed ? What do you mean… ‘destroyed’ ?

Male doctor : Your brain will be electronically simplified.

Miles : My brain… ? – (wistfully) it’s my second favourite organ…


To be continued…


End-notes

* Both films were co-written with Marshall Brickman, as Allen has sometimes done (even recently) with Brickman and others…




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 15 August 2014

@Film4's 100 Must-See Movies of the 21st Century - analysed (as a list)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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15 August

What is a must-see film ?


Film4.com (@Film4) has recently compiled a list of what it calls 100 Must-See Movies of the 21st Century*



However, can it really be right that fourteen of them (which, after all, is around 1 in 7) were released in 2011 alone ? And, when some critics have hailed 2014 as an exceptionally strong year for cinema, is it justified that only Boyhood (2014) qualifies for inclusion ?

A survey last year, by Time Out Film (@TimeOutFilm), of The 100 best romantic movies was much more candid about how the selection had been carried out, which allowed your correspondent to analyse just how many (sc. how few) votes were needed for a film to appear in the top 10, let alone in the top 100 at all.

Analysis showed that, out of 101 respondents (from six categories), only 19 voted for Annie Hall (1977), but that voting still sufficed to secure it 4th place (not that it is not one of Woody Allen’s best films, of course). Much of the list’s pretence to authority (e.g. in the title of the list) then seemed to fall away ?



So how does this top 100 fare…

In decreasing order, starting with the highest-ranking year, one can see below, in every year since the turn of the century*, how many ‘top films’ – according to this list – were released (figures in bold face), with a cumulative percentage

Where the total number of films that has been selected in each year is equal, the number of films that featured in the top 50 (which is in parenthesis) has been used to determine the order of priority (otherwise they are left in date-order)



2011 – 14 (7) 14%

2013 – 12 (5) 26%

2001 – 9 (5) 35%

2000 – 8 (5) 43%

2004 – 7 (5) 50%

2002 – 7 (4) 57%

2009 – 7 (4) 64%

2003 – 7 (2) 71%

2008 – 7 (2) 78%

2005 – 5 (3) 83%

2006 – 5 (1) 88%

2007 – 4 (4) 92%

2010 – 4 (2) 96%

2012 – 3 (0) 99%

2014 – 1 (1) 100%



One can see quite clearly that 26% of films (slightly more than 1 in 4) were chosen from just two years (i.e. 2011 and 2013), and 50% from just five years (adding in 2000, 2001 and 2004). Is this why people have said that 2014 is a significant year for film, although there is only one film from this year – that they meant the year when films were in cinemas ?

Only 2010 significantly moves position, from 12th to equal 6th, on the basis of using the score for the top 50 instead (otherwise 2012 and 2014 swap places).


Top 20 by country (accounting for 12 countries), with a cumulative percentage

USA, as the country with the most films produced, is listed first, and, as it was the country of production of the top-listed film, 1 is given as the highest position scored (in parenthesis)

Where, for example, a film was a UK / US production (as with Gravity (2013), each country has been awarded one-half

Where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)



Directors are noted who have two films in the top 100 (with the name, date and position of the films) : only Richard Linklater and Michael Haneke have two in the top 20

Joel and Ethan Coen are the only directors with two films in the list not to have one place in the top 20 (No Country For Old Men (2007) (at 25) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) (at 69))

If the 300-film list had not been curtailed, how many more pairs (or trios) of directors might there have been... ?



United States - 8½ (1) 42.5%
3 : Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood (2007)
[also 45 : Punch-Drunk Love (2002)]

5 : Richard Linklater, Boyhood (2014)
[also 17 : Before Sunset (2004)]

10 : David Fincher, Zodiac (2007)
[also 30 : The Social Network (2010)]

United Kingdom - 1½ (4) 50%
4 : Jonathan Glazer, Under the Skin (2013)
[also 41 : Sexy Beast (2000)]


France - 1½ (8) 57.5%
14 : Michael Haneke, Hidden (Caché) (2005)


Taiwan - 1 (2) 62.5%

China - 1 (6) 67.5%

Hungary - 1 (7) 72.5%

Japan - 1 (11) 77.5%

Spain - 1 (15) 82.5%

Germany - 1 (16) 87.5%
16 : Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon (2009)

Greece - 1 (18) 92.5%

Iran - 1 (19) 97.5%


Belgium - ½ (8) 100%



It has become clear that, when the introduction to the list says that it is ‘Drawn from 29 countries around the world’, although Mexico and Spain, which were co-producing countries of Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), could have added two to the total of 29 countries (but only one film), this has not been done in the list (as one establishes by having added all of the totals (below))



The rest of the top 50 (21 to 50) by country (which adds 10 countries, to make 22)


United States - 8½ (23)


France - 5 (28)


United Kingdom - 4½ (39)


Sweden - 2 (26)


Romania - 1 (22)

South Korea - 1 (24)

Thailand - 1 (27)

Russia - 1 (29)

Turkey - 1 (33)

Senegal - 1 (37)

Germany - 1 (47)

Australia - 1 (48)

Japan - 1 (49)


Mexico - ½ (21)

Spain - ½ (21)




Adding these totals gives the Top 50, together with a cumulative total


As above, where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)


United States - 17 (1) 34%


France - 6½ (8) 47%


United Kingdom - 6 (4) 59%



Germany - 2 (16) 63%

Japan - 2 (11) 67%

Sweden - 2 (26) 71%


Spain - 1½ (15) 74%


Taiwan - 1 (2) 76%

China - 1 (6) 78%

Hungary - 1 (7) 80%

Greece - 1 (18) 82%

Iran - 1 (19) 84%

Romania - 1 (22) 86%

South Korea - 1 (24) 88%

Thailand - 1 (27) 90%

Russia - 1 (29) 92%

Turkey - 1 (33) 94%

Senegal - 1 (37) 96%

Australia - 1 (48) 98%


Belgium - ½ (8) 99%

Mexico - ½ (21) 100%



The cumulative total shows that the United States, the United Kingdom and France alone account for 59% of the top 50, with 41% (as calculated) spread between, and adding four further countries accounts for nearly 75% of the listing for 1–50

NB As co-producing countries, Belgium and Mexico would not have been counted by Film4 on this part of the list, nor, in the second part, would Ireland, South Africa or New Zealand (even though that entry is for three films)



The remainder of the top 100 (51 to 100) by country, with cumulative percentage


As before, where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)


United States - 23 (53) 46%


United Kingdom - 16½ (54) 79%


Canada - 2 (56) 83%


Brazil - 1 (51) 85%

Italy - 1 (52) 87%

Argentina - 1 (61) 89%

Japan - 1 (71) 91%

South Korea - 1 (76) 93%

Denmark - 1 (94) 95%

France - 1 (98) 97%


New Zealand - ½ (53) 98%

South Africa - ½ (90) 99%

Ireland - ½ (95) 100%


The top three countries (USA, UK and Canada) account for 83% of the films in positions 51 to 100, and only ten other countries are accounted for in this part of the list



Nearly last, the full list (by adding the last two lists), with cumulative percentage


United States - 40 (1) 40%

United Kingdom - 22½ (4) 62.5%

France - 7½ (8) 70%

Japan - 3 (11) 73%


Germany - 2 (16) 75%

South Korea - 2 (24) 77%

Sweden - 2 (26) 79%

Canada - 2 (56) 81%


Spain - 1½ (15) 82.5%


Taiwan - 1 (2) 83.5%

China - 1 (6) 84.5%

Hungary - 1 (7) 85.5%

Greece - 1 (18) 86.5%

Iran - 1 (19) 87.5%

Romania - 1 (22) 88.5%

Thailand - 1 (27) 89.5%

Russia - 1 (29) 90.5%

Turkey - 1 (33) 91.5%

Senegal - 1 (37) 92.5%

Australia - 1 (48) 93.5%

Brazil - 1 (51) 94.5%

Italy - 1 (52) 95.5%

Argentina - 1 (61) 96.5%

Denmark - 1 (94) 97.5%


Belgium - ½ (8) 98%

Mexico - ½ (21) 98.5%

New Zealand - ½ (53) 99%

South Africa - ½ (90) 99.5%

Ireland - ½ (95) 100%



Where the single-country entries appear

The final study explores where the 30% (or fewer) of films that are not from the main countries represented come from : the listing above shows that there are sudden little runs, such as 48 / 51 / 52, 18 / 19 / 22 and 6 / 7 / 8 (that one includes where France’s top-rating film appears), where a country’s single film appears – other decades are dominated by the States and the United Kingdom’s productions, as listed below (with the number, in bold, of such films, and the films from other countries given, in italic and within square brackets, by placing)


0 – 10 6 : [2 / 6 / 7 / 8]

11 – 20 4 : [11 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 18 / 19]

21 – 30 3 : [21 / 22 / 24 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29]

31 – 40 4 : [31 / 33 / 34 / 35 / 36 / 37]

41 – 50 6 : [44 / 47 / 48 / 49]


51 – 60 6½ : [51 / 52 / 53 (with United States) / 56]

61 – 70 9 : [61]

71 – 80 8 : [71 / 76]

81 – 90 9½ : [90 (with United States)]

91 – 100 7½ : [95 (with United Kingdom) / 97 / 98]



Looked at quickly, there appear to be runs of films not from the United States or the United Kingdom within the Top 10, and the fifth decade (from 41 to 50), and those decades have more films that are not from those countries

After the sixth decade (which is similar), a pattern sets in of almost all films being from the United Kingdom or the States. e.g. an almost uninterrupted run from 57 (in the sixth decade) through the next two decades, 71 to 80 and 81 to 90, to 94 : seemingly, only 4 non-US, non-UK ‘must-see’ films in a run of 39 films

We must pass it over to others to calculate what that might signify by way of selectivity…



End-notes

* Even it was actually on 1 January 2001, because 2000 was the last year of the twentieth century...




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday, 14 March 2014

Paul : The distinction of being not just a bore, but a boor

This is a review of Midnight in Paris (2011)

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This is a review of Midnight in Paris (2011)

People have, apparently, likened this film to Manhattan (1979), which they mean in a back-handed way, as saying that Allen has returned to form, but this view is wrong on two counts: Allen may have made occasional recent films (e.g. Match Point (2005)) that do not work (or only work clunkily), but he has never lost his form; and Midnight has almost nothing, opening montage excepted, in common with Manhattan (or, for that matter, Annie Hall (1977), the other chosen point of comparison – why choose two films made more than thirty years ago ?).

Taking each point in turn, there is nothing to be apologetic about in either Whatever Works (2009), perfectly suiting Larry David, or You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010), although probably less successful for reasons of plot – Midnight is not a welcome recovery, but simply surpasses them both.

The wide situational and character sweep of Midnight is also nothing like that of Annie or Manhattan, which are arguably more like chamber music than this piece, which, if not a symphony, has clear claims on being a concerto.

In addition, it is not as if Paris has not been the backdrop before, unless people have already forgotten Everyone Says I Love You (1996), and it is common knowledge that Allen is truly American in feeling the French capital’s charm and attraction – just as he does London’s very different pull.


Midnight is not perfect, either, but there are some very good elements to it, some of which look back in the canon: for example, the lead character, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), has definite similarities, not just in mannerisms and pacing, with Kenneth Branagh as fellow writer Lee Simon in Celebrity (1998). Such figures, if not Allen-substitutes per se in the films in which he does not (choose to) cast himself, function in the same pivotal sort of way, and often have the pick of the lines. Taking that further, Lee, as does Gil, finds himself in an exciting new world that he does not know, but it is one of elitism and opportunity – Gil has opportunity, perhaps, but of a different kind..

The film feels very close to Allen’s short stories, and he very casually has Gil enter the world of the 1920s by being offered a lift, when he is lost, by a group of revellers in a vintage Peugeot: nothing overt in this transition, except for the bubbles in the champagne that they insist that Gil join them in drinking, and he is taken he and we know not where.

Thankfully, we can get away from regarding the scenario as magical realism (whatever it may be, though it little matters). For Gil not only gives us the benefit (probably partly because he is tired after an evening of wine-tasting, in which he favoured quantity over quality) of letting us be several steps ahead, but also because, just because of the dramatic irony, we can watch his reactions of disbelief more closely. (As the film goes on, they may, however, do Allen fewer favours : how few even know that Eliot’s initials stand for Thomas Stearns, let alone would blurt out the names ?)

Yes, it is just a given that this travel to the earlier decade happens, and that, although Gil can repeat the experience, he cannot explain it to anyone in his own time. (As is usual, e.g. Lucy first visiting Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.) Yet it is never just a shared magical assumption about the nature of the world, unless one includes the viewer.

The feel of the era is good, which, when this is not an art-historical recreation, is what matters, but Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) could still have had a chance to shine more with a less functional role (which may have fallen prey to editing): after all, Stein herself was no mere editor or midwife to other’s creations, and was just as much a character as Hemingway and Dalí, in particular, are shown to be. (As to whether she would have called them ‘crazy Surrealists’, one is less sure.)

With Adriana (Marion Cotillard), one is less sure whether it is that she gives Gil attention (which Inez (Rachel McAdams), though she is also sexy, seems less keen to do), as that she can claim Modigliani and Braque as lovers (in this film, at least), that draw him to her company : let alone the t.v. series, Goodnight, Sweetheart dealing with such a theme, it is at the centre of The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and Allen’s early story ‘The Kugelmass Episode’ (first collected in Side Effects).

As a parable of what one can and cannot have, Paris of the 1920s may be where Gil would have himself be, but he has not foreseen that it might not be everyone’s choice, and he finds himself making other choices for the future instead.

Where the film really does not work is with facts about the contemporary literary and artistic circles, and, if one were the ‘pseudo-intellectual’ whom Gil dubs the very irritating character of Paul (who is of a type whom Allen likes creating, and does so well*), one would have had them to hand in the screening :

Not that it matters, because it may be that all this is Gil’s imagination, and that he is capable of being confused about facts as even Paul (who apparently confounds the figures of Rodin’s wife and mistress, and then insists that the guide is wrong**): if so, then, as with a dream, or as with psychosis (the explanation offered by Inez for Gil’s behaviour and utterances), what he experiences is the product of his will and mind.

In a dream, it is just as much we who are in the dream, creating the people whom we meet, be they Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, or Papa Hemingway (obviously not then called that, but that is how Gil relates to the man whom he has met). One curiosity is that, except for the party to which Gil is first taken, everyone is dressed much more casually than photographs show was usual at that time. Another is that, when it comes to Buñuel, Allen has made him a rather sullen character, and with no suggestion, around the table, that Dalí and he are – or are to be – film-makers together (in Un Chien Andalou (1929). Largely as a private joke, because few might know the reference, Allen has Gil give Buñuel the essential details of the plot of The Exterminating Angel (1962) (which are also supposed to be dealt with in a scene within L’Age d’Or), but Buñuel rebuff him with very unreceptive questions about why that would or would not happen – as if he has not got a Surrealist bone in his body.

This does not seem to suggest that we believe that Gil is dreaming, even if what he experiences is a deep wish on his part, but rather that too much licence has been taken with showing this period, probably in an attempt not to confront an audience with the truth, that the free and easy Surrealists and other artists of the time were to be found in suit and tie.



End-notes


* E.g. Alan Alda as Lester in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). (Alda is also in Everyone Says.)


** However, it seems that Rodin did nothing as bourgeois as intending that either woman – let alone any of the others ! – could contemporaneously claim to be married to him: it was only after knowing Rose Beuret for 53 years that, in 1917, the year in which they both died (she just two weeks afterwards), they married.

By then, Camille Claudel, the other woman, had already been confined to a psychiatric unit for more than twenty years, following a breakdown when Rodin and she split up in 1898, and died there in 1943.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 19 October 2013

Who is Woody Allen in Blue Jasmine ?

This is a review of Blue Jasmine (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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19 October (updated, with a 102-point rating, 20 October; Tweet added 1 January 2015)

This is a review of Blue Jasmine (2013)

I was waiting for something to happen - and it never did


Obviously, what is revealed about Jasmine (and to her) in the last ten or so minutes did not count for the person who made this comment - what sort of film was this meant to be in which this elusive 'something' might eventuate ?

Having seen Blue Jasmine (2013) exactly a month ago, on the opening night of Cambridge Film Festival, I was pleased to have watched it again, and pleased for Woody Allen that Screen 2 this Saturday night was sold out. Do I vainly hope for some of those people to go back and see some of the fifty or so other Allen films, whether or not they missed them before ?


If so, I would commend, in addition to the well enough known Annie Hall and Manhattan, these personal favourites :


Interiors (1978)

Stardust Memories (1980)

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Deconstructing Harry (1997)

Love and Death (1975)



Back at the film, and the question posed, I have heard it suggested that Dr Flicker is the person closest to Allen himself (i.e. the parts that he writes for himself to play), and I watched him with that in mind. No, he is not Allen - Allen is, I think, Jasmine (Cate Blanchett).

Tuned to Allen, knowing almost all of his films, and having seen this one before, I could hear his cadences, his little excited rages in this role – not exactly, but Jasmine is the one who approaches his self-expression, his fluidity, his vocabulary and assurance. Listen for him, and I think that you will find his voice in Blanchett’s.


97 = S : 16 / A : 17 / C : 15 / M : 17 / P : 16 / F : 16


A rating and review of Blue Jasmine (2013)


S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scored out of 17, 17 x 6 = 102)


Meanwhile, back at the nub, the film is not as dark as Interiors, but it is a drama, and I hope that it is being appreciated for that, though one with the humour that Interiors almost entirely lacks : there are themes in common here, and the Allen who cut up footage of Charlotte Rampling for a vivid portrayal of her distressed state of mind (as Dorrie) in hospital in Stardust has long had, if not themes of mental health, then hints at it, and I respect him immensely for that.

Blanchett almost cannot fail to win something big for this performance, because, for me, it is so easily convincing, so true to the psychology of her life (explored more here) and to the experiences that she has, but I am, if anything, even more delighted at a peach of a role like this for the tremendous Sally Hawkins, who really shows what a versatile actor she is at playing a character who has a capacity to delight in the smaller things and be radiant – Allen had cast her in Cassandra’s Dream, and this new part she carries off perfectly.

As to the story, no, there is no big something, and I did not have to absorb two previous films as at the time of the previous viewing, but I am very pleased to run this one through again and see how beautifully it holds together. When Allen crafts a screenplay, as in Hannah (or Harry, or Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), there is nothing that one would change with it – when, for me, he does not, in Match Point (2005) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), it is hard to know where and how one would rescue it.

So my hope is for people to be patient with Jasmine’s story, and the choices that she has made – when she meets Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), she clicks into a fantasy where she has always been called Jasmine, etc., etc., and I could see her entering into straightaway believing things, just because she was saying them and wanted them to be true. We can reach back into the story, and see how much – and, at the same time, how little – she knew about what was happening and what she was doing, and how, as we see her doing all along with prioritizing her needs, she hurts her stepson and husband.

I also hope that they will look out some other Allen, not Midnight in Paris (2011), really, but maybe some of the ones that I have listed; that Hawkins now has the recognition that she deserves; that Allen keeps on with his film every year; and that good film-making like this will be taken to people’s hearts, and cherished.






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Sunday, 25 August 2013

Cambridge Film Festival : Friday Films at The Red Lion, Whittlesford

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26 August

<i>If you haven't seen Woody Allen's classic take on a rom-com, we cannot recommend this highly enough ! Consistently voted a top comedy, it has inspired TV & film ever since.

Friday 6 September - doors open at 6.00 - films at dusk</i>


Except that :

1. The word 'rhombus' does not rhyme with the word 'comedy', so the term is a nonsense.


2. Anyway, a real romantic comedy, such as Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), keeps you waiting until the end to find out.


3. Maybe, for all Allen's and Keaton's quips, it is not even a comedy.


4. In any case, although he is never properly given credit for it, Marshall Brickman co-wrote the film with Allen.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

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Thursday, 16 May 2013

Why we should listen to Cloud Atlas (2012)…

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16 May

I begin with some Tweets :


@theagentapsley I'm good, but tired. But I'm now somewhat scared by the meat eating piggies!


Maybe, @barackobama, but Asimov and others wrote about The Greenhouse Effect DECADES ago - was it just OK on other Planets ?! #Ostriches




Thesis : Any good ‘literature’, something that – in the broadest sense – we can just read, or choose to read deeply in, yields understanding.

It could be Measure for Measure, about which Peter Brook spoke last night (in conversation with @DrMatthewSweet on @bbcNightWaves). Brook’s right about its depths, of course : it’s a play that I haven’t thought about in a long time, but, with its shady Duke, shadier Angelo, dubious Friar, and its Isabella, who wrestles with accepting how the world is to save her brother Claudio, it has heaps to tell us about our own time(s) !


Significant interjection Stuff the people who, intellectually*, reject the term ‘emotional intelligence’ – being truly understanding about the emotional life of ourselves and of this world is a form of intelligence, that some scorn to own, lack, or haven’t learnt to use !

They are the ones who fail to employ the patent wisdom of Pascal’s wager, because they wrongly think it only relevant to belief in God through Jesus Christ : such is not just emotional ignorance, but intellectual suicide through philistinism. At school, geography (and my reading in Asimov and the like) told me all about The Population Explosion and The Greenhouse Effect.

Years later, how can politicians** tell us that this has become a problem, when (for example) US Presidents have quite deliberately ignored the truth for years : the truth being, not whether climate change is or is not a reality, but that – in accordance with the wager – one has to act / believe, because, if one doesn’t, it will be too late by the time that one’s scepticism is proved wrong.

Why didn’t those Presidents act ? Sheer political self-interest in the face of the car lobby, i.e. the manufacturers, drivers, gasoline merchants, petrochemical industries, geologists, and all those who propel the resistant forces against change or invest (financially, emotionally or intellectually) in the status quo. With four-year Presidential terms, who was going to screw their hopes or those of their party ?

You’re gonna miss that train, if you don’t leave now. Who speculates on the possibility of supraluminal travel to get him or her to the station as the train is parting ? Who except abusers, crudely put, fuck their children’s and other generations’ future by selfish inaction to retain power ?

The message of Cloud Atlas, of (at the heart of the film) Sonmi-451, played beautifully and with great inner sensitivity by Doona Bae, opposes such greed, such mean-spiritedness, such lack of human-kindness. We need cultural messages such as this one to overcome our base, venial and mean-minded inclinations and to look to the interests of others – whoever they may be, seen or unseen…


End-notes

* And do so on the level of Intellectual Intelligence, i.e. little better than Mental Masturbation, the game that we can all play with reality : good sex is an escape from how terrifying life can be, in my view, and masturbation (when only bad or no sex presents itself) is, as Woody Allen’s script for Annie Hall (1977) has it, ‘sex with the person I love [most / best].

And, people who knocked To Rome with Love (2012), is the failure and condemnation of the Nazi-styled opera vindication of his lovely parody in the guy who can only sing well in the shower ?!


** Arguably, rooted only in getting re-elected, not frightening the frail and frightenable electorate with awkward truths that might have them do things differently, which they don’t want, of course.



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Friday, 22 March 2013

Woody took me with him, money or no

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22 March

Starting out, and even with Annie Hall (1977), Woody Allen collaborated with Mickey Rose, as he did on the screenplay of Take the Money and Run (1969) (though not the direction). He has talked about working with Rose and also Marshall Brickman, and said that he liked the variety doing so gave him (Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) is a later piece of co-authorship with Brickman).

Stardust Memories (1980), coming after the ill-received sombre drama that was Interiors (1978) and Manhattan (1979) (co-written with Brickman), almost mercilessly mocks these ‘early funny films’, but here we can see how well elements work, such as faultless delivery of the punch-line and of the joke built on leading up to incongruity. The recent film documentary of Allen drew the attention of those who did not know to how he began, as a gag-writer, and Rose and he know how to construct them : after 15 minutes, Virgil Starkwell (Allen in a voice-over) was in love with Louise; after 30 minutes, he had decided not to steal her handbag.

But there are many other things in play, with references both to cinema literacy, and even James Joyce (with 16 June, the Bloomsday featured in Ulysses, the date of a big bank robbery cum fake film, complete with a sort of, if possible, even more crazy Erich von Stroheim) : Allen effortlessly makes films that come afterwards, such as Stir Crazy (1980) or O Brother, Where Art Thou ? (2000), seem just lumbering, keeping in one groove, whereas Rose and Allen have leapt on to a new theme and feel for that part of the film.

In this his, if you include the strange film that is What’s Up, Tiger Lily ? (1966), second feature, his camera angles are already inventive, he as his own leading man and Janet Margolin as Louise parody their own domesticity as gangster and moll (Louise saying ‘You know, he never made the ten most-wanted list. It’s very unfair voting – it’s who you know’), and a quick moment when the side-effect of a drug-trial has Virgil turn into a rabbi for a few hours, with clever cutting between the onlookers and the subject, is – along with the mock-documentary story-telling (Virgil’s parents being interviewed about him, both disguised with Groucho glasses that sport bushy eyebrows and moustache, plus a patently plastic beak-like nose) – where he comes back to, in 1983, with Zelig.

The film is funny and fresh, and it was a delight to catch up with Allen and his cynical take on romance, where the love is in the early days of fascination and attraction, and irritating habits and silly misunderstandings make it wear thin. We simply do not ask whether Louise, an unlikely laundress, would seek out Virgil, who turns out not to be a cellist with the Philharmonic (but a failed bank-robber), because we are having too much fun !


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Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Allen Italian

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

11 October

Allen's right, you know! Just look at how great these titles look translated :


* Misterioso Omicidio A Manhattan

* Crimini E Misfatti

* Una Commedia Sexy In Una Notte Di Mezza Estate

* Harry A Pezzi

* Il Dormiglione

* Prendi I Soldi E Scappa

* La Maledizione Dello Scorpione Di Giada

* Basta Che Funzioni

* Incontrerai L'Uomo Dei Tuoi Sogni

* Provaci Ancora Sam



But I don't know where they were going with this one (unless conjured up after a cult viewing of the desperation that is Withnail and I) :

Io E Annie


Turning Sweet and Lowdown into Accordi E Disaccordi is, to me, a little mystifying, too.


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Thursday, 8 March 2012

Woody and his women (1)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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9 March

Now, don't get me wrong, because Allen has written some great screen parts for women, but I'm thinking - as I do incessantly, thoughts feverishing racing around my head, trying to catch up with each other and sometimes crashing - about this collection Mere Anarchy yet again.

What does he read (or hear) that he writes such things in these stories for his male characters to write (or say) about women*?:


* The twin dirigibles that stretched her silk blouse to the breaking point

* Hoping to revel in tableaux of raven-tressed sinners looking like they’d come directly from the pages of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue as they undulated, seminude, in sulphur and chains

* Once she wiggled her award-winning posterior into the lift


Not, by any means, that sex - particularly oral sex - hasn't always been a preoccupation since Allen's earliest films (such as Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), and Annie Hall (1977)), but maybe, despite the humour (which is maybe a bit too unsubtle), it's that it passes by quickly onscreen as cheeky, rather than as smutty or prurient...


End-notes

* There is another in this collection of around 18 pieces, but I have mislaid it: it must be resting in Father Ted's account, I think. (None is narratated by a woman.)


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Sunday, 5 February 2012

Philip French rides (roughshod) again! - A summary

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

6 February

For those in a hurry, a digest of the main points of that posting (Philip French rides (roughshod) again!):


* Philip French claims that Francine Stock has 'borrowed' from Martin Scorsese a description of her book In Glorious Technicolor as 'a personal journey'


* This is not only ludicrous, because there is nothing distinctive about that phrase (it is arguably just a cliché), but it only appears on the dust-jacket, describing Stock and her book in the third person


* Much of what he does quote is from the book's five-page Prologue (hardly the most important thing about it), but he also comes up with a quotation of around thirty words, which, if it appears anywhere, would naturally appear there, but does not


* Nonetheless, after giving a fleeting idea of what the book is, French goes on to use the phrase and quotation to say why the book is not 'personal' (Stock does not assert that it will be - in that sense), the choice of films is not 'idiosyncratic' (it is never claimed that it is - quite the opposite, if one reads the Prologue properly), and why Stephen Hughes (who contributed to the book, though French claims that he is a co-author, for which there is no evidence) and Stock have not done something new at all


* By way of a close, French delights in a typo in his proof copy (doubtful whether he looked at the published book before publishing his piece?) - 'photagonist' for 'protagonist' - and, because of it, forgives Stock for something else from the dust-jacket, which he fails to put in context in a six-page section about fashion, which is in part of a chapter about Annie Hall (1977)


Can there be true joy in reviewing something that you haven't read (or watched) properly?**



End-notes

* Because of a typo?! Does Stock, then, moonlight as a typesetter?

** Certainly not in reading the review!


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